Villain Is Dioxin. Relocation
Is Response. But Judgment Is in Dispute.

Day after
day for 40 years, the dark pine logs lay gleaming in the Florida sun, stretching
back to the rail tracks almost as far as the eye could see.

Neighbors
of the EscAmbia Treating Company in the black working-class area at the
edge of this port city in the Florida Panhandle thought nothing of it:
the plant meant jobs, and besides, blacks could not live just anywhere.

But the logs,
telephone poles in the making, were dripping chemical preservatives, first
creosote, then pentachlorophenol. In 1991, long after the company went
bankrupt, an emergency team from the Environmental Protection Agency dug
up the toxic mess, piled it into a 60-foot-high mound laced with dioxin
and other chemicals, and stored it tight under a polyethylene cover.

That was not
enough for neighbors of the old wood-treating plant, fearful that their
backyards had become contaminated by dioxin, a potentially cancer-causing
agent. For four years they demanded to be moved, and in October, the Federal
agency agreed.

It plans to
spend about $18 million relocating people from 158 houses and 200 apartments.
Agency officials say they are unsure about when the move will take place
but hope to accomplish it within a year. It would be the third largest
move of private citizens the agency has undertaken, after the relocations
at Times Beach, Mo., and at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., both in
the 1980's.

The relocation
plan is striking for other reasons. one senior agency scientist who supports
the move asserted that it had been ordered by the White House because of
the elections this year, provoking dissension within the agency. Other
agency officials vehemently disputed the assertion. Another scientist at
the agency suggested that it had deliberately lowered its health-risk standards
here, in part because of the Florida site's notoriety. An agency engineer,
who also supports the decision, predicted that the decision would have
significant long-term effects.

"The policy
implications of Escambia are incredible," said the engineer, Hugh Kaufman.
"Everybody who lives near a site with that amount of material is going
to say, 'Move us.' There are places that are more contaminated than Escambia,
that have no evacuation."

By all accounts,
what happened here in this neighborhood of small brick homes is unusual.
Faced with steady pressure from organized residents, who had made the site
a national cause , the environmental agency amended its first plan
twice this year, adding more families to those it had originally said were
at risk from dioxin. The agency had already invoked a standard using a
far smaller amount of the chemical than normal to decide that the residents
were in danger, said one senior agency scientist.

And now officials
are not even certain that dioxin will ultimately be invoked to justify
part, or all, of the move, said the scientist, Elmer Akin, chief of the
office of technical services in the agency's Atlanta district. "We may
or may not need dioxin to drive the decision," Dr. Akin said.

Yet that assessment
was disputed by at least one senior agency official, who said residents
were at "risk."

Scientists
have not definitively determined the health effects from dioxin, a byproduct
of various industrial processes. An agency draft study two years ago concluded
that it was a "probable" cause of cancer. Tests have also shown that dioxin
can cause developmental disorders in young animals.

Leaders of
the citizens group here, jubilant over forcing the environmental agency
to accede to their wishes, are certain that it did so because of worries
over health.

"When I got
the news I was just overwhelmed," said Margaret Williams, who heads the
group, Citizens Against Toxic Exposure.

But something
besides health appears to be on the minds of officials who made the costly
decision about what Dr. Akin described as "a very political site" -- one
that the agency singled out more than a year ago as a national test case
for possible citizen relocations at other sites.

In a political
climate newly charged with "environmental justice" considerations, health
hardly entered the final equation at all, another senior said scientist,
speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"It's a political
motivation, and a response to political pressures, and it's an election
year," the scientist said. "Essentially, E.P.A. has been told to move all
the people out by the White House. They don't want this issue around."

The scientist
added that some upper-level supervisors were resentful. But he said, "They're
doing the right thing for the wrong reasons."

Other agency
officials vigorously denied the assertion. "Nothing can be further from
the truth," said Loretta Ucelli, an agency spokeswoman. "There has been
no involvement by the White House in this decision."

Brian Tohnson,
a spokesman for the White House environmental office, said, "It was definitely
an E.P.A. decision."

Senior officials
at the agency insist that health concerns were uppermost in deciding on
the relocation. "The contaminant there being dioxin, the residents there
are at risk," said Tim Fields, a Deputy Assistant Administrator.

But how much
risk is unclear. No comprehensive health survey has been undertaken, because
the citizens group has refused to cooperate with the United es Public Health
Service, fearing that it will conclude that nothing is amiss.

A health assessment
commissioned by the Government last year from Florida scientists said about
the dioxin found in some residents' yards: "The estimated daily dose for
children . . . is at least 10 times less than the level at which no adverse
health effects have been observed in animals."

Bruce Tuovila,
an author of the study and a scientist with the Florida Department of Health
and Rehabilitative Services, said in an interview: "The primary concern
is whether there is any health issue for residents off the site.

There doesn't
appear to be, except in regards to dioxin. There really is not contamination
off-site at levels of concern."

Still, Mr.
Kaufman, the agency engineer, suggested that "common sense" justified the
relocation. "Very few people are going to keel over and die because of
a Superfund site," he said. "It's the long-term health risks that are the
problem."

Agency officials
acknowledge that the notion of "environmental justice" was a consideration,
as it has been in the upper reaches of the Clinton Administration. This
idea arises from studies indicating that minorities have been disproportionately
affected by pollution.

In an executive
order in 1994, President Clinton decreed that agencies pay heed to the
notion of "environmental justice." The order required that minorities be
given a voice in environmental regulation and that cleanup of minority
neighborhoods affected by the worst toxic waste sites, or Superfund sites,
like the one here, take priority. It is among about 1,300 such sites across
the nation.

The citizens
group here helped keep the notion of environmental justice on the front
burner. The group was able to hire a scientist to watch over the agency's
testing in the neighborhood near the plant.

Interpretations
of the environmental agency's tests here have provoked controversy at other
Superfund sites, said Dr. Akin, the agency scientist. Since the mid-1980's
and Times Beach, where the Federal Government evacuated more than 2,000
residents because of dioxin fears, officials have used a standard of contamination
in the soil of one part per billion to decide whether people are in danger,
the scientist said.

But at the
site here, officials used a much looser standard, 0.2 parts per billion,
a "rare exception," said Dr. Akin. He added: "A lot of decisions have been
made around the country on the one part per billion. Someone could say,
'What are you going to say about all those other decisions?'"

Of the Escambia
site, Dr. Akin said: "on our traditional number, you couldn't have justified
doing anything down there." As to why the standard had been changed, he
said: "The thinking was, it was just time to re-examine the driver.

It certainly
had something to do with the highly visible site."

The agency
decided that here, 0.2 parts of dioxin per billion in the soil meant an
additional 1 in 10,000 risk of developing cancer, its usual threshold for
taking action. The agency found that the threshold had been exceeded at
only 21 of the houses in the neighborhood.

Mr. Fields,
the Deputy Assistant Administrator, disputed the assertion that the 0.2
parts per billion was a rare exception. "The one part per billion is a
level we used back in the mid-80's," he said. "Science has changed over
time."

The residents
here do not think in terms of excess cancer risks, or parts per billion.
They are convinced that the cancer deaths they have seen in their own families,
the stillborn babies, the stinging feeling in their eyes, are all directly
attributable to the wood-treating plant.

"That stuff
is in these houses, it's in these walls -- it's terrible" said Ollie Mcwaine,
who has lived near the plant for 38 of her 65 years.

Her husband,
Jimmy, who is 60, agreed with the plans to move, saying, "The right idea
is just to relocate the whole neighborhood."

Margaret Williams
heads a citizens group that pressured the Federal Government to agree to
relocate people from 158 houses and 200 apartments whose property was exposed
to dioxin in Pensacola, Fla. (Lee Celano for The New York Times)

Copyright 1996 The New York
Times CompanyThe New York TimesOctober 21, 1996, Monday, Late
Edition - FinalSECTION: Section A; Page 12;
Column 1; National DeskBYLINE: By ADAM NOSSITERDATELINE: PENSACOLA, Fla.LOAD-DATE: October 21, 1996